The 5 Things I’m Not Going To Do In 2018 To Keep My Sanity (& My Money)
December 26, 2017Note from the editor: As we round out 2017, many people will be setting goals and intentions for the year ahead. To help with that, our blog team will be sharing their take on goals throughout the week — we all have a different opinion! We hope you enjoy hearing how each of us approaches the idea of goal-setting and New Year’s resolutions. From Tania:
It’s confession time. I started off the year awesome. I entered 2017 as a “woman with a plan.” I had everything planned from my meals to kids’ chores, house cleaning and workout schedules. I walked into 2017 with my head held high.
Fast forward to December and our meal yesterday was courtesy of a fast food drive thru, our home looks like a tornado hit it, and the only thing I have done with my gym membership over the last few weeks was to use my membership card to scrape ice off my car windshield.
Down but not defeated
I am down, but I am not defeated. I will rise again above last minute fast food runs, climbing over piles of laundry and my quickly expanding waistline. Our recent home purchase and move (at least this is the excuse I am using), coupled with several family emergencies, spiraled my plans into non-existence. So now that the dust has settled, I am working on getting back on track.
Taking time to reflect
As I looked at the shattered ruins of my 2017 goals (I gotta admit, I forgot how amazing Hershey Sundae pies taste), I immediately started reflecting on what happened. When I looked at my schedule over the past 11 months, I started to see how over-scheduled I was and my goal for 2018 became clear.
Making a ‘do-not-do’ list
For 2018, my goal is a more of an “un-do” list than a to-do list. It is a list of those things that I am not going to do to help me stop setting unrealistic expectations around the following:
1. Feeling bad about eating out. One night when I could not sleep, I binged on “perfect mom” YouTube channels. You know what I mean — the ones who never eat out, cook every meal from scratch, all organic, on a budget of five dollars. I initially thought, “if they can do it, I can do it.”
No, I can’t. I have good days and I have lazy days, and I have a life. So, for 2018 I am budgeting a few nights a week of eating out on our busiest days. For the other days, I am going back to meal planning using websites like Emeals, TheFresh20, or even using meal kit delivery. The lesson I learned from 2017 is that when things get crazy, maintaining my mental sanity trumps the spending on eating out a few times a week.
2. Wasting energy on emotional vampires. I know this is not a financial one, but all the money I spend on chocolate after talking to an emotional vampire (my drug of choice when overwhelmed, although Starbucks is a close second) puts this into a finance-related category. My lesson learned for 2017 is that I cannot want someone else’s happiness, success or goals more than they do. My 2018 goal is to release people (stop talking to them and/or enabling them) so they can experience the consequences of their life choices.
3. Volunteering for everything. The problem is that I want to be actively involved in just about everything, but I have to officially wave the white flag of surrender — I give up. I just can’t do it all. My plan for 2018 is to limit my volunteering and giving to those causes that are the most meaningful to me in order to keep my sanity and my funds straight.
If this is also something you struggle with, think through your year — if you have periods of major activity such as a busy work schedule, that’s when you have to say no to volunteering for additional activities. I tell my kids hearing the word “no” (which is a complete sentence) is character building. If you are like me and struggle to say no, tell yourself you are helping that person build character by getting them used to hearing the sentence, “No.”
4. Overly complicating money management. Believe it or not, this was an area that was unnecessarily complicated for me. I always say to choose the easiest way to do things in order to stick to your goals. So I finally took my own advice and started using my bank’s financial budgeting tools, instead of the budgeting system I was using. This small step has saved me so much time — I no longer have to reconcile my bank account with the budgeting website I was using.
If you struggle to do something, such as exercising or budgeting, look for the simplest way to get it done. For working out it may be downloading an app with workouts you can do anywhere; for budgeting it may be starting with your local bank. Struggle to get groceries? Use grocery pickup services like the ones at Walmart or delivery services like Amazon Fresh to make buying groceries a breeze.
5. Letting my kids do too many sports/activities. It only took a few activities before I found my days crammed with kids’ events and my wallet drained. To gain balance, we will be limiting activities and using the money we’ll save to increase our college savings. This will also give us back several hours in the week that were spent in the car or sitting at practices, games, etc.
“Un-resolutions”
I guess you can look at my goals for 2018 as an “un-resolution list:” a list of things I am resolving to dump or get rid of in order to maintain my sanity so I can focus on the things that are important to me. As you think about your year ahead and what you’d like to accomplish, maybe think about whether there are things that need to come off your 2017 to-do list in 2018.
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